Purpose: This assignment acquaints you with reading a scientific article and with scientific writing. Being able to read and properly summarize scientific articles will help you when you write papers, research proposals, and lab reports in other psychology classes.
Submission Guidelines:
1. Your summary should be ~1 page (no more than 1.5 pages), DOUBLE-SPACED, Font Size 12. Margins should be 1.25″ at the top, bottom, left and right
2. You are encouraged to work on the assignment with others. However, you must submit your own assignment to Blackboard.
3. Copying or paraphrasing sentences from the article is not acceptable.
4. As you read the article, identify key points: the research topic, purpose and hypotheses (if any), what was done, the results, and how the researchers interpreted the results. Highlighting these points as you read will help you find them more easily when you write.
5. Describe the 5 following sections: background, specific purpose(s), method, results, and discussion.
Follow these length/formatting guidelines:
• 2-4 sent.: Background: Describe the context for the overall research project. Are there any specific developmental theories being tested?
• 1-3 sent.: Specific purpose(s): Why was this research done? If hypotheses were tested, describe them.
• 4-7 sent: Method: Who/how many participated? How were they obtained? What variables were examined? Was the study correlational or an experiment (if an experiment, what “conditions” were compared). What was the basic procedure: what did participants do?
• 2-5 sent: Results: Describe the key findings.
• 2-5 sent: Discussion: Major conclusions: What do the results mean? What are the implications of the findings? Did the authors identify any major weaknesses or limitations of their study?